Over the past year, a Wakulla County resident has been inundated with unwanted faxes sent to a health industry giant.

Ray Smith, a retired insurance professional, has received more than two dozen faxes containing confidential patient history — a social security number, medical treatment records and prescription information — addressed to Molina Healthcare's Miami office.

The senders of the faxes vary. Most come from different doctor's offices around Florida. However, their intended destination is the same. Each fax is addressed to the company that offers health plans in more than a dozen states and Puerto Rico.

The long time Wakulla County resident has had difficulty convincing the Fortune 500 company to put a stop to the faxes.

At first, when the faxes began last summer, Smith would reach out to the patient whose information he received, the sender and Molina Healthcare. Some patients thanked him for alerting them. Others didn’t respond.

Molina told Smith the company would email their staff and resolve the issue. But that hasn’t helped much, Smith said. The company has repeatedly pledged to stop the faxes. But the faxes still kept coming, despite his follow-up efforts.

“It didn’t work,” he said. “And the last person I talked to said ‘there’s nothing we can do.’” The company's suggestion hasn't been helpful. Smith said Molina Healthcare once suggested he change his phone number. He balked. The burden shouldn’t be placed on him, he said.

The faxes can appear at very inconvenient times. Sometimes he received faxes addressed to Molina Healthcare in the middle of the night. Each fax rang his home phone number since both numbers are the same.

Late night phone calls would be a nuisance to most people, but for Smith, it’s especially aggravating.

“My father-in-law has cancer,” Smith said. Each phone call could be news alerting Smith about his wife's dad's worsened condition or death.

“It’s a shame that we have to get up in the middle of the night and answer the fax machine at 2-3 o’clock in the morning.”

He doesn’t know whether both he and Molina Healthcare receive the faxes. That troubles him because of the importance of medical documents. In one case, he received a document with “STAT” and “Please STAT” written across the page and a note explaining the patient has chest pain.

To protect the security of the patients whose information in each fax, Smith keeps the faxes in a large envelope. He’s burned the faxes from 2016.

The Tallahassee Democrat reached out to Molina Healthcare for comment. The company has not responded either by phone or fax as of Tuesday afternoon. It’s been about a month since Smith received a fax addressed to Molina Healthcare. He's holding his breath. He isn't sure the problem has been solved.

Smith wrote a letter in March to Molina Healthcare's office in Miami. It details his correspondence with the company and his concerns over both the patients' and his privacy being violated. At the end of the letter, Smith threatens to pursue legal action against the company if the issue persists.

When asked what type of legal action he could pursue, Smith's frustration shows. “Anything to get them to stop.”